Zeelo to provide free coach transfers to Euro Bus Expo
Smart bus service company Zeelo will provide free coach transfers for attendees of Euro Bus Expo, to be held at the NEC Birmingham on 1-3 November.
Zeelo and its partners will deliver the service each day of the show. Coaches will run from Brighton, Cardiff, Colchester, Liverpool, Portsmouth and York. Visitors to Euro Bus Expo interested in joining at intermediate points should complete the online booking form. Passengers will be notified in advance of departure times and locations.
The complimentary coaches have been scheduled to encourage greener travel to Euro Bus Expo, which is set to attract 9,000 attendees as the coach and bus industry reconnects.
Zeelo services offset 100% of the carbon created on every journey, including on dead legs, and Euro Bus Expo organiser Diversified Communications says that its coaches to the event have the potential to take 900 return car journeys off the road.
Speaking about the offer, Zeelo CEO Sam Ryan says: “Zeelo is pleased to offer free transport on our smart coaches to Euro Bus Expo visitors, and we are also looking forward to visiting the event and meeting with our partners in the industry.
“The partnership with Euro Bus Expo demonstrates how using our smart bus platform can help operators to identify and build services that maximise ridership and get more coaches on the road for private services across the country; all this while helping corporates and schools to meet their staff and students’ transport needs wherever they live.
“The added benefit to commuters is that they will help to reduce pollution and improve congestion with smarter, faster, safer, green and reliable services in partnership with the UK’s local operators.”
Euro Bus Expo will again bring together thought leaders, suppliers, manufacturers and thousands of coach and bus operators. They will discover the latest industry developments and be able to take part in a series of free seminars.
Adds Even Director Helen Conway: “Visitors taking advantage of the free coach travel offer will have further networking opportunities, can multitask en route, experience the services that we as an industry offer and advocate – and more importantly, lead the way on making small changes towards modal shift.
“If you have never considered travelling to Euro Bus Expo by coach before, make this the year that you do.”
Transdev Blazefield to adopt Freeway tech across fleet
Transdev Blazefield is overhauling its maintenance operation with the fleet-wide rollout out Freeway technology. The supplier's platform will ultimately connect 700 mobile devices and a series of operational management systems to provide centralised control of the operator's 550 buses.
Freeway describes the software as “one of the most advanced digital systems in the UK.” It uses artificial intelligence to automatically calculate optimum job scheduling and resource allocation based on live data feeds from drivers, workshop technicians and other staff equipped with mobile devices.
Freeway will be integrated with “a raft of systems” already used by Transdev Blazefield, including those for operations, finance and fuel management.
The operator has initially rolled out Freeway technology at its The Harrogate Bus Company subsidiary. It plans for the software to be live across all its operating centres by the end of 2022. Freeway will gather data daily from 550 on-bus units and 150 devices across the engineering function. With Transdev Blazefield it will see an estimated 200 users.
In Harrogate the system was adopted as a proof-of-concept exercise, with Transdev Blazefield Operations Director Vitto Pizzuti saying that the rollout “went very smoothly” over a full introduction period of three months. He credits commitment from Transdev’s Harrogate team and Freeway for that achievement.
Freeway will also be used to automate stores and purchasing by the provision of a digitised and centralised solution. It will automatically assign authorisation levels allowing purchase order approvals based on order value and seniority.
Adds Mr Pizzuti: “By centralising stock control and purchasing, we foresee significant savings. Freeway will allow us to dramatically reduce administration, control quality, secure better deals through corporate purchasing, and share stock among the group.
“With Freeway, we can look at trends, set up KPIs to track performance, and better manage warranty claims. We will be able to challenge suppliers if they are not delivering, something we could not do before as we did not have the information.”
Meet the brand: CitySwift
We catch up with Alan Farrelly from CitySwift to find out more about their presence at Euro Bus Expo, on stand T80.
Tell us a bit about your company:
Founded by Alan Farrelly and Brian O’Rourke, CitySwift is an Irish big data company powering bus networks across the world. Since its inception in 2016, CitySwift has built the world’s first "Mobility Intelligence as a Service" platform that gives bus network providers the always-on insights needed to operate and adapt bus networks, with precision.
The CitySwift platform was built to break down all of the barriers to data that bus network providers have to deal with. CitySwift partners no longer take action based on manual analysis, guesswork, and inaccessible and unreliable data. Instead, they meet and exceed punctuality and reliability goals, without compromising on resources. Bus giants like National Express and Transport for Wales are using CitySwift to power their passenger experience. Networks built on CitySwift are reliable, efficient, and punctual – free of friction and catered to passenger needs.
What makes CitySwift so powerful is that the team comes from a background of real-world bus industry experience. Merging this industry experience with deep knowledge of data science, bus networks can get the best of both worlds.
Tell us about your latest products, services, promotions or launches that visitors can hope to see on your stand:
CitySwift will be launching two new products at the Euro Bus Expo 2022.
-CitySwift Network: Network provides bus networks with the occupancy, capacity, and origin-destination insights they need to match supply and demand by incorporating CitySwift’s proprietary origin-destination algorithm.
-CitySwift Discovery Packs: Discovery Packs are a range of dashboards delivering brand new insights across bus networks, tailored to problem areas like Driver Performance, Running Board Analysis, and Bus Priority measures.
Why is exhibiting at Euro Bus Expo 2022 an unmissable opportunity for you?
We’re looking forward to getting the opportunity to learn more about emerging trends and innovation within the industry, meet new and existing clients, and launch some really exciting products we’ve been working on the past few months